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Tag Archives: U.S. Military

A study from the Rand Corp. warns that the U.S. military forces are poorly structured and argues that the military must reform its structure and strategies to better deal with challenges. (Associated Press) Photo by: Andreea Alexandru

A new study by the Rand Corp. is warning that U.S. military forces are poorly structured to meet the threats posed by China, Russia and other states, as well as the continuing war against Islamic terrorism.

The study, “U.S. Military Capabilities and Forces for a Dangerous World,” presents the stark conclusion that the American military needs to reform its structure and war fighting plans to better deal with military challenges.

“Put more starkly, assessments in this report will show that U.S. forces could, under plausible assumptions, lose the next war they are called upon to fight, despite the United States outspending China on military forces by a ratio of 2.7 to 1 and Russia by 6 to 1,” the report said. “The nation needs to do better than this.” Continue reading →

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a rocket carrying the world’s first quantum satellite lifts off from northwestern China’s Gansu Province, on Aug. 16, 2016. China’s creation of a quantum satellite system pushes forward its ability to send communications that are impenetrable by hackers. Jin Liwang AP

WASHINGTON U.S. and other Western scientists voice awe, and even alarm, at China’s quickening advances and spending on quantum communications and computing, revolutionary technologies that could give a huge military and commercial advantage to the nation that conquers them.

The concerns echo — although to a lesser degree — the shock in the West six decades ago when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, sparking a space race.

In quick succession, China in recent months has utilized a quantum satellite to transmit ultra-secure data, inaugurated a 1,243-mile quantum link between Shanghai and Beijing, and announced a $10 billion quantum computing center.

If you’ve been a close observer of China for the last few years, you would’ve come to realize that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan isn’t only about Taiwan, but war with America. It’s also summarized in a quote on the Global Geopolitics quotes page. When it comes to war with Taiwan, there is no pre-set or definitive date. Wars are based on specific conditions being met that minimize damage against the attacker and maximize it against the defender. Unpredictability and ability to sustain are other keys.

“The central committee believes, as long as we resolve the United States problem at one blow, our domestic problems will all be readily solved. Therefore, our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan, but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites.”

– Chi Haotian, Minster of Defense and vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission

Book based on internal documents says Beijing’s invasion plan would trigger U.S.-China conflict

China has drawn up secret military plans to take over the island of Taiwan by 2020, an action that would likely lead to a larger U.S.-China conventional or nuclear war, according to newly-disclosed internal Chinese military documents.

The secret war plan drawn up by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Communist Party’s armed forces, calls for massive missile attacks on the island, along with a naval and air blockade that is followed by amphibious beach landing assaults using up to 400,000 troops.

The plans and operations are outlined in a new book published this week, The Chinese Invasion Threat by Ian Easton, a China affairs analyst with the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank. Continue reading →

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on September 26, 2017. Photo: Reuters / Aaron P Bernstein

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff set out new US military strategies and policies toward China and Asia in a senate hearing

China was identified this week as posing the most significant long-term military challenge to the United States by America’s senior-most military leader, as he set out new US military strategies and policies toward China and Asia more generally in a congressional hearing.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also revealed in the hearing, before senate, that he had informed China last summer of US plans to use military force against North Korea. Continue reading →

Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, gives a keynote address during the Naval Future Force Science and Technology (S&T) Expo, July 21, 2017. This is a slide from his presentation.

Service chiefs are converging on a single strategy for military dominance: connect everything to everything.

Leaders of the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines are converging on a vision of the future military: connecting every asset on the global battlefield.

That means everything from F-35 jets overhead to the destroyers on the sea to the armor of the tanks crawling over the land to the multiplying devices in every troops’ pockets. Every weapon, vehicle, and device connected, sharing data, constantly aware of the presence and state of every other node in a truly global network. The effect: an unimaginably large cephapoloidal nervous system armed with the world’s most sophisticated weaponry.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency will take greater control of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile system from Boeing at the end of this year, according a spokesman. This is a major shift in oversight. (Department of Defense)

Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate this week that the military is taking steps to improve its capabilities for countering and conducting information warfare — the use of cyberattacks and influence operations.

The Pentagon “must continue to improve its ability to exploit cyberspace as a pathway for information operations to affect adversary perceptions, decisions and actions in support of strategic ends,” Gen. Selva said in written policy statements to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The four-star general testified at a nomination hearing for a second term as vice chairman. Continue reading →

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military on Sunday shot down a Syrian Air Force fighter jet that bombed local forces aligned with the Americans in the fight against Islamic State militants, an action that appeared to mark a new escalation of the conflict.

The U.S. had not shot down a Syrian regime aircraft before Sunday’s confrontation, said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. While the U.S. has said since it began recruiting, training and advising what it calls moderate Syrian opposition forces to fight IS that it would protect them from potential Syrian government retribution, this was the first time it resorted to engaging in air-to-air combat to make good on that promise.

The U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Iraq said in a written statement that a U.S. F-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian government SU-22 after it dropped bombs near the U.S. partner forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

An Iranian missile boat shined a laser at a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter flying over the Strait of Hormuz on June 13 in what the U.S. military called an “unsafe and unprofessional” action.

The Iranian vessel also turned its spotlight on two Navy ships that the helicopter was accompanying as they transited the strait, according to U.S. Navy Commander Bill Urban, a U.S. Fifth Fleet spokesman. Continue reading →

The Navy SEALs, one of the U.S. military’s most elite forces, is dealing with a “staggering” drug problem that resulted in a safety stand-down and a stern warning from a commander late last year, CBS Evening News reported Tuesday

Three whistle-blowing SEALs, whose faces were blacked out and voices altered by the broadcaster because of fears of retribution from within the ranks, said members of the Navy’s cream-of-the-crop special-operations team around the world had tested positive for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamine.Continue reading →

Trucks are seen carrying parts required to set up the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system that had arrived at the Osan Air Base on March 6 / Getty Images

THAAD deployed to South Korea

China on Tuesday reacted harshly to the U.S. military’s deployment of an advanced missile defense system to South Korea—one day after North Korea fired a salvo of 600-mile range missiles toward Japan.

The first battery of the Army’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, a long-range mobile missile defense system, arrived in South Korea on Tuesday for deployment to a location in the southeastern part of the country. Continue reading →

The Pentagon announced Tuesday, March 6, that a US armored convoy was deployed around the disputed northern Syrian town of Manbij, and in an unusual move, released a video depicting the convoy and its men.

A US military spokesman tweeted that the US deployment was a deliberate action taken to assure that forces within the US-led coalition deterred aggression and kept the focus on defeating ISIS.

You’ve probably heard that China’s military has developed a “carrier-killer” ballistic missile to threaten one of America’s premier power-projection tools, its unmatched fleet of aircraft carriers. Or perhaps you’ve read about China’s deployment of its own aircraft carrier to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. But heavily defended moving targets like aircraft carriers would be a challenge to hit in open ocean, and were China’s own aircraft carrier (or even two or three like it) to venture into open water in anger, the U.S. submarine force would make short work of it. In reality, the greatest military threat to U.S. vital interests in Asia may be one that has received somewhat less attention: the growing capability of China’s missile forces to strike U.S. bases. This is a time of increasing tension, with China’s news organizations openly threatening war. U.S. leaders and policymakers should understand that a preemptive Chinese missile strike against the forward bases that underpin U.S. military power in the Western Pacific is a very real possibility, particularly if China believes its claimed core strategic interests are threatened in the course of a crisis and perceives that its attempts at deterrence have failed. Such a preemptive strike appears consistent with available information about China’s missile force doctrine, and the satellite imagery shown below points to what may be real-world efforts to practice its execution. Continue reading →

German soldiers sit on a Bueffel (“buffalo”) armoured tank recovery vehicle in Grafenwoehr, Germany January 31, 2017, before deployment to Lithuania

Three weeks after the “largest US military deployment into Eastern Europe since the cold war“, consisting of thousands of tanks and troops under a planned NATO operation to “reassure the alliance’s Eastern European allies”, on Tuesday Germany started the deployment of tanks to Lithuania as part of the same NATO mission meant to “bolster confidence” in the face of what NATO member states call “Russian aggression.”

Germany is one of the countries that agreed to provide troops and weapons for the NATO mission, which involves deploying four battalions in Poland and the three Baltic states. Continue reading →

U.S. Army Europe commander Ben Hodges speaks as Polish general Boguslaw Samol stands during news conference during a visit to the Multinational Corps Northeast, NATO base at Szczecin in northwest Poland / Reuters

U.S. Army tanks recently deployed to Europe arrived at a port in Germany, some of them with dead batteries and without sufficient fuel.

The Wall Street Journalreported this week on logistical challenges that the U.S. military faced when sending an armored unit of 4,000 soldiers and 90 tanks to Europe in order to protect NATO member states and deter Russian aggression. Continue reading →

Hollywood is set to begin work on Little America, a dystopian adventure movie set in a future where a Trump-like U.S. president has bankrupted America and China has called in its debts.

The film, set to be produced by explosion-obsessed director Michael Bay, describes a future where the president has destroyed America’s economy, prompting China to call in its debts, making it the de facto owner of the country while many Americans emigrate to China for work.

Universal Pictures recently picked up the rights to the movie after a heated bidding war with several producers, reports the Hollywood Reporter. Continue reading →